Tony Award-winning Hadestown director Rachel Chavkin and Tony-winning Moulin Rouge! The Musical choreographer Sonya Tayeh have signed onto the Broadway-aimed Gatsby musical, which will premiere in 2024 at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Chavkin and Tayeh join the previously announced team that includes composer Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine, lyricist Thomas Bartlett, and book-writer Martyna Majok. The team will work together to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby for the stage.
Gatsby will be produced at A.R.T. by special arrangement with Amanda Ghost and Len Blavatnik for Unigram/Access Entertainment, and Jordan Roth, in association with Robert Fox. Hannah Giannoulis serves as coproducer. ART served as the tryout venue for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, which Chavkin also directed.
Set in the Roaring '20s, The Great Gatsby follows eccentric millionaire Jay Gatsby, who will stop at nothing in his tragic pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman who he loved in his youth.
To get a taste of what Gatsby might sound like, Welch composed a song for Baz Luhrmann's 2013 Great Gatsby film—starring Leonardo DiCaprio—called "Over the Love," which is from Daisy's perspective. Watch Welch perform it below.
Because The Great Gatsby is now in the public domain, anyone can adapt it without having to pay royalties, so there are many in-progress adaptations of Fitzgerald's novels.
Another musical, The Great Gatsby, had a public presentation in late 2022. That adaptation features music and lyrics by Nathan Tysen and Jason Howland and a book by Kait Kerrigan. Marc Bruni directed the public presentation.
Immersive Everywhere's interactive production of The Great Gatsby, created and directed by Alexander Wright, will begin March 9 at Park Central Hotel New York, which will transform its 16,000 square foot ballroom into The Gatsby Mansion.
